What’s Love Got to Do with Success? Everything.
These events are right around the corner: 2nd Love Summit Business & Leadership ConferenceOctober 12-13, 2017 // LPK Brand Innovation Center, CincinnatiSeats are filling fast. Get your tickets today.Colombia – A Journey To The Land Of Transformation: The Mountains, Jungles, Kogi, & Caribbean Coast Of Colombia with John Perkins & Daniel KoupermannDecember 2-13, 2017 // Reserve your spot.
My travel schedule these past couple of months has been quite busy, which is why my August newsletter is coming out a bit late. I recently returned from an amazing Pachamama Alliance trip deep into the Amazon rainforest with 26 other people. Today I am speaking at the 2017 WELCOA Summit, a corporate wellness conference in Omaha, Nebraska. In October I'm off to Cincinnati for Dream Change’s 2nd Love Summit business and leadership conference. All of these events share something very important: the role love plays in creating healthy people, a sustainable world, and successful businesses.Indigenous people, like the Achuar we spent time with in the Amazon – and the Kogi and Maya I will take groups to live with in December and January – know that for humans to continue surviving, we must love our home, this planet. They tell us that we have behaved irresponsibly, that the sacred glaciers are melting, the rivers are drying up, the animals and forests are disappearing. We in the “civilized” world are savaging nature. We are in the process of destroying life as we know it. And this is because we’ve forgotten the importance of love.As I prepare for the Love Summit this October, I recall words the Dalai Lama had spoken several years earlier. He had invited a Dream Change group I was leading to spend an afternoon with him at his Dharamsala home. During that meeting, someone asked if he had any regrets about leaving Tibet.“Regrets?” The Dalai Lama smiled. “Regrets are foolish, a waste of time.” He paused. “Don’t bother with regrets. Learn from life and go on living, meditating, and taking appropriate actions.” The smile broadened. “Focus on love.”In this time of global crises, we all need to stop regretting what has happened, learn from the past, confront our inertia and lack of creativity around the crises, and rise up to a greater awareness of what is needed to overcome those crises.Love.Of course, love is what we need. That advice of philosophers and poets echoes down the centuries. It seems simple. Yet, the stories those in power have constantly told are ones of anger, hatred, competition, war, and “them” against “us.” Stories of limited resources. Take all you can get before the other guy grabs it.I remember an afternoon when I’d stood with an Achuar hunter in the rain forest. He aimed his blowgun at a bird in a tree. Then he lowered it without shooting and stared at the bird.“What happened?” I asked.“I realized that it’s the nesting season for that bird. His mate is sitting on eggs. If I kill him, those eggs won’t hatch.”Later that night, as we relaxed around the fire, he told me that Achuar men are raised to understand that the birds and animals they hunt must be loved. The men learn the habits of their prey at an early age, just as young women learn about loving plants and children. “We always ask permission before killing,” he said. “That bird this afternoon did not give me permission.”While I know that, as individuals, indigenous people have their faults – like all of us – their traditional commitment to providing for future generations reflects a concept of love of life that goes beyond the trivialized concepts expressed in modern literature, movies, theater, and art. Nature-based societies understand that human existence depends on loving everything that promotes life. They teach their children to love the trees, animals, the rivers, forests, mountains, the sun, the air, all of Earth – not because they are driven by some idealized vision of romantic love, but because they recognize that all things necessary to life deserve their love. They know, as we should, the importance of protecting that which serves them, their children and grandchildren. They may cut down a tree to build a home or provide wood for their fires or they may kill an animal for food, but they always do so from a place of respect and a dedication to the future survival of all the things that make life livable.People who journey from modern cultures into the rain forest come to understand that one of the problems with the modern world, one of the causes of the crises that we’re now experiencing, is our lack of love for the very things that support our economic, social, political, ecological, and governmental systems––in fact all life.Attendees at the WELCOA Summit and the Love Summit will hear that love is the bottom line for business. Every company wants its clients to love it and its goods and services. And they are gaining a clear understanding that the only companies that will prosper in the near future are those that understand that loving people, plants, animals, the elements – the Earth – is quickly becoming the key to success.Tickets to the Love Summit 2017 are available here, with a special 50% discount scholarship rate for those who need it. I hope to see you in Cincinnati!Upcoming events:2nd Love Summit Business & Leadership ConferenceOctober 12-13, 2017 // LPK Brand Innovation Center, CincinnatiSeats are filling fast. Get your tickets today.Colombia – A Journey To The Land Of Transformation: The Mountains, Jungles, Kogi, & Caribbean Coast Of Colombia with John Perkins & Daniel KoupermannDecember 2-13, 2017 // Reserve your spot.